In typical approaches for distributing a build of a code base, source code files that are to be distributed for compilation are first pre-processed at the machine at which the associated code base is to be built to include all referenced files before being dispatched to recruited volunteer machines to be compiled. However, the pre-processing of source code files is typically both CPU and I/O intensive and, consequently, consumes significant processing resources at the machine building the code base. As a result, the number of volunteer machines to which such a machine is able to distribute processing is bounded by the speed with which the machine can pre-process the source code files that are to be distributed. Thus, although typical distributed build approaches yield some improvements in build speeds, the gains level-off as the available processing resources at the machine distributing needed compilation tasks become consumed by pre-processing the source code files that are to be distributed.
Other typical approaches for distributing a build of a code base at a machine include distributing pre-processing and/or compilation tasks to volunteer machines and installing and configuring a shared file system associated with the machine that is used by the volunteer machines when performing tasks for the machine. Traditional shared file systems are typically slow and inefficient when used by volunteer machines in such a configuration and also result in suboptimal parallel processing performance when used for distributing builds.
Thus, there is a need for an improved manner to distribute the processing associated with building a code base.